Roh Tae-moon, head of mobile devices at Samsung, said the South Korean tech giant intends to expand the target audience of foldable smartphones in response to a slowdown in the premium segment and macroeconomic instability.
With the evolution of the Galaxy Z Flip and the Galaxy Z Fold, the shipments of such devices will account for half of the total number of Samsung smartphones in the premium segment, which now includes the Galaxy S22, S22 Plus, and S22 Ultra, in some degrees the latter are considered successors to the Note series. According to a top manager of Samsung, foldable models will become the new standard for smartphones.
The conference, which featured a Samsung representative, took place shortly. After the launch of the next-generation foldable models, the Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4. Which will go on sale in a number of countries and regions on August 26. So far, Samsung has dominated the flexible display smartphone sector, as rivals. Like Huawei, Oppo, Xiaomi and Vivo sell their own variants of this type. Mainly in the home market in China.
Foldable smartphones will make for half of Samsung’s supply of premium phones by 2025
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According to Omdia, 7.1 million Z Flip 3 and Z Fold 3 smartphones were in sale in 2021. And models of this generation were available only in August last year. The leader was the “clamshell” Z Flip 3 – sold 4.6 million units. According to Omdia estimates, 9 million foldable smartphones were in sale worldwide during the reporting period, an increase of 309%. At the same time, the share of foldable smartphones in Samsung accounted for only 2.6% of the company’s sales in 2021 – in total, it delivered 271.5 million smartphones.
According to The Korea Herald, although Samsung overtakes its main competitor Apple in terms of shipments with 20% of smartphone sales worldwide, the influence of the South Korean manufacturer in the premium segment has fallen by 3 percentage points down to 17%, while Apple, on the contrary, is doing well. For it, growth in the same year amounted to 5% up to 60%. This is by a study by Counterpoint Research. Counterpoint expects Samsung to sell a total of 9 million Z Flip 4 and Z Fold 4 this year. Bringing global shipments of foldable gadgets to 16 million and 26 million in 2023.
